linguistic philosophy

linguistic philosophy

Linguistic Philosophy

(philosophy of linguistic analysis, ordinary language philosophy), a school of analytic philosophy that originated in the 1930’s and developed in Great Britain (G. Ryle, J. Austin, J. Wisdom, M. MacDonald). It has influenced philosophers in the USA (M. Black, N. Malcolm), Australia, and the Scandinavian countries.

Being a Neopositivist school, linguistic philosophy denies that philosophy’s task is to present an integrated world view and regards traditional philosophical problems as pseudo-problems that arise as a result of the disorienting influence of language on thought. Unlike the adherents of the philosophy of logical analysis—another variety of analytic philosophy—the linguistic philosophers consider that the task of the philosopher-analyst is not to reform language in accordance with some logical norm but rather to provide a detailed analysis of the actual use of natural spoken language with the aim of eliminating the misunderstandings which arise as a result of the incorrect usage of language. In particular, according to linguistic philosophy, such an analysis leads to a clarification of the causes underlying the formulation of philosophical problems; these problems supposedly result from the incorrect extension of ordinary word usage.

Objecting to preoccupation with technicalities in philosophy, that is, a preoccupation with the use of a specialized conceptual apparatus, and upholding the “purity” of natural-language usage, linguistic philosophy resolutely opposes scientism in philosophy, especially the scientism of the logical positivists.

The ideas of linguistic philosophy were first expressed in the 1930’s by the Cambridge school of the followers of G. Moore and the later Wittgenstein. In the late 1940’s, the philosophers of the Oxford school (G. Ryle, J. Austin, P. Strawson) gained in influence; while opposing all tendencies toward the unification of language, they emphasized the diversity of linguistic phenomena and of the methods of using linguistic expressions.

In spite of the unsoundness of linguistic philosophy as a philosophical trend on the whole, the work of the linguistic philosophers has proved valuable in the analysis of the logical structure of ordinary language and the study of its semantic possibilities.

While Heidegger's precise position within the context of twentieth-century philosophy of language and linguistic philosophy and his relationship to the heirs of structuralism obviously remain a complex and multifaceted topic, Language after Heidegger makes an important case for the originality and the considerable innovative potential of the linguistic aspects of the Heideggerian heritage.

Nevertheless, philosophical precision is exactly what this term requires; particularly if the author wants to avoid falling victim to the claim he resists in chapter 7, that linguistic philosophy is just about "words" (80).

Bram Mertens' Dark Images, Secret Hints: Benjamin, Scholem, Molitor and the Jewish Tradition traces a path readers of Benjamin and Scholem have long hoped to follow: the route that leads from the Jewish tradition and Scholem's studies in the Kabbalah to Benjamin's linguistic philosophy and philosophy of history.

Badiou's theoretical articulation of the Event is disarming, and I believe, worthy of our greater attention, especially in the literature classroom where poststructuralist linguistic philosophy and neohistoricist ideologies continue to dominate the way we approach literary texts with our now near-myopic focus on culture.

While some may find such an analysis of religious language disturbing and may regard it as a comparatively recent development with the advent of modern linguistic philosophy, many believers through the centuries have been aware that the language of belief is an attempt to say the near unsayable.

The essay is a lucid and elegant exposition, but in the demands it makes on readers not deeply immersed in twentieth-century analytical and linguistic philosophy, it serves as a useful reminder to the English (as opposed to continental) student of Eco of the different intellectual tradition on which Eco draws, as well as how much philosophy, from medieval Aristotelianism onwards, is embedded in Eco's work, in his fiction as much as his theoretical writings.

Newell, who heads the strategic initiatives area of Freddie Mac's legal division, edged into some linguistic philosophy to describe how the mortgage finance industry would know when electronic mortgages truly had arrived.

His redactions do not carry the rhetorical force of Derrida's claims, but he deftly situates the specific conclusions that Derrida's notion of iterability entails within the broader context of linguistic philosophy.

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